Golden Bridge

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 3 Section 1

His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres

Into our province of ephemeral sight,

A colonist from immortality.

A pointing beam on earth’s uncertain roads,

His birth held up a symbol and a sign;

His human self like a translucent cloak

Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world.

Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time

And paying here God’s debt to earth and man

A greater sonship was his divine right.

Although consenting to mortal ignorance,

His knowledge shared the Light ineffable.

A strength of the original Permanence

Entangled in the moment and its flow,

He kept the vision of the Vasts behind:

A power was in him from the Unknowable.

An archivist of the symbols of the Beyond,

A treasurer of superhuman dreams,

He bore the stamp of mighty memories

And shed their grandiose ray on human life.

His days were a long growth to the Supreme.

A skyward being nourishing its roots

On sustenance from occult spiritual founts

Climbed through white rays to meet an unseen Sun.

His soul lived as eternity’s delegate,

His mind was like a fire assailing heaven,

His will a hunter in the trails of light.

An ocean impulse lifted every breath;

Each action left the footprints of a god,

Each moment was a beat of puissant wings.

The little plot of our mortality

Touched by this tenant from the heights became

A playground of the living Infinite.

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 1 from 14:19

Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed

Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;

A lonely splendour from the invisible goal

Almost was flung on the opaque Inane.

Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;

Infinity’s centre, a Face of rapturous calm

Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;

A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.

Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,

The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths

That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars

And saw the spaces ready for her feet.

Once she half looked behind for her veiled sun,

Then, thoughtful, went to her immortal work.

Earth felt the Imperishable’s passage close:

The waking ear of Nature heard her steps

And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,

And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile

Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.

All grew a consecration and a rite.

Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;

The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind

Arose and failed upon the altar hills;

The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.

Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs

On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,

Here where one knows not even the step in front

And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,

On this anguished and precarious field of toil

Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,

Impartial witness of our joy and bale,

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.

Here too the vision and prophetic gleam

Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;

Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,

Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range.

A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,

The worship of a Presence and a Power

Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts,

The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.

Book 7 Canto 2 Pg 486 Section 3

All this the spirit concealed had done in her:

A portion of the mighty Mother came

Into her as into its own human part:

Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods

It marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,

Dreamed in the passion of her far-seeing spirit

To mould humanity into God’s own shape

And lead this great blind struggling world to light

Or a new world discover or create.

Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven

Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.

But for such vast spiritual change to be,

Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart

The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil

And step into common nature’s crowded rooms

And stand uncovered in that nature’s front

And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.

Obedient to a high command she sat:

Time, life and death were passing incidents

Obstructing with their transient view her sight,

Her sight that must break through and liberate the god

Imprisoned in the visionless mortal man.

The inferior nature born into ignorance

Still took too large a place, it veiled her self

And must be pushed aside to find her soul.

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 2 Section 2 5:43 to

For this she had accepted mortal bredth

To wrestle with the Shadow she had come

And must confront the riddle of man’s birth

And life’s brief struggle in dumb Matter’s night.

Whether to bear with Ignorance and death

Or hew the ways of Immortality,

To win or lose the godlike game for man,

Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice.

But not to submit and suffer was she born;

To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.

Here was no fabric of terrestrial make

Fit for a day’s use by busy careless Powers.

An image fluttering on the screen of Fate,

Half-animated for a passing show,

Or a castaway on the ocean of Desire

Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport

And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,

A creature born to bend beneath the yoke,

A chattel and a plaything of Time’s lords,

Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed

One slow move forward on a measureless board

In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom,—

Such is the human figure drawn by Time.

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06

Apart, living within, all lives she bore;

Aloof, she carried in herself the world:

Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,

Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;

The universal Mother’s love was hers.

Against the evil at life’s afflicted roots,

Her own calamity its private sign,

Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.

A solitary mind, a world-wide heart,

To the lone Immortal’s unshared work she rose.

At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:

On the lap of earth’s original somnolence

Inert, released into forgetfulness,

Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind’s verge,

Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.

In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms

She lay remote from grief, unsawn by care,

Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.

Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,

And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom

And recognised the close and lingering ache,

Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,

But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.

The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:

Heavy, unwilling were life’s servitors

Like workers with no wages of delight;

Sullen, the torch of sense refused to burn;

The unassisted brain found not its past.

Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.

But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.

At the summons of her body’s voiceless call

Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,

Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,

Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,

Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams

Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06

Too unlike the world she came to help and save,

Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast

And from its dim chasms welled a dire return,

A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.

To live with grief, to confront death on her road,—

The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share.

Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,

Awaiting her ordeal’s hour abode,

Outcast from her inborn felicity,

Accepting life’s obscure terrestrial robe,

Hiding herself even from those she loved,

The godhead greater by a human fate.

A dark foreknowledge separated her

From all of whom she was the star and stay;

Too great to impart the peril and the pain,

In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.

As one who watching over men left blind

Takes up the load of an unwitting race,

Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,

Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,

Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.

The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here

Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.

For Nature walks upon her mighty way

Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;

Leaving her slain behind she travels on:

Man only marks and God’s all-seeing eyes.

Even in this moment of her soul’s despair,

In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,

No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;

She told the secret of her woe to none:

Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.

Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;

Even her humanity was half divine:

Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,

Her nature felt all Nature as its own.

Savitri: Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06

Too unlike the world she came to help and save,

Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast

And from its dim chasms welled a dire return,

A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.

To live with grief, to confront death on her road,—

The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share.

Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,

Awaiting her ordeal’s hour abode,

Outcast from her inborn felicity,

Accepting life’s obscure terrestrial robe,

Hiding herself even from those she loved,

The godhead greater by a human fate.

A dark foreknowledge separated her

From all of whom she was the star and stay;

Too great to impart the peril and the pain,

In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.

As one who watching over men left blind

Takes up the load of an unwitting race,

Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,

Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,

Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.

The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here

Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.

For Nature walks upon her mighty way

Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;

Leaving her slain behind she travels on:

Man only marks and God’s all-seeing eyes.

Even in this moment of her soul’s despair,

In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,

No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;

She told the secret of her woe to none:

Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.

Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;

Even her humanity was half divine:

Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,

Her nature felt all Nature as its own.

Book 1 Canto 1 Section 2 2:45 to 17:06

She had brought with her into the human form,

The calm delight that weds one soul to all,

The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.

Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears

Rejected the undying rapture’s boon:

Offered to the daughter of infinity

Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,

Hoping her greater being to implant

And in their body’s lives acclimatise

That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;

Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:

It fears the pure divine intolerance

Of that assault of ether and of fire;

It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

It trembles at its naked power of Truth

And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,

It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:

Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;

It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,

Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,

Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,

The cross their payment for the crown they gave,

Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

A fire has come and touched men’s hearts and gone;

A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.

Savitri BOOK VI: The Book of Fate 443-44-45

CANTO II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain

Section 2

Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;

Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;

Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience

Which was thy body’s dumb original base;

Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape:

A shadow in a shadowy tenebrous womb,

Till life shall move, it waits to wake and be.

In one caul with joy came forth the dreadful Power.

In life’s breast it was born hiding its twin;

But pain came first, then only joy could be.

Pain ploughed the first hard ground of the world-drowse.

By pain a spirit started from the clod,

By pain Life stirred in the subliminal deep.

Interned, submerged, hidden in Matter’s trance

Awoke to itself the dreamer, sleeping Mind;

It made a visible realm out of its dreams,

It drew its shapes from the subconscient depths,

Then turned to look upon the world it had made.

By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins,

The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul,

Else had the Inconscient never suffered change.

Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,

His slow inertia as of living stone.

If the heart were not forced to want and weep,

His soul would have lain down content, at ease,

And never thought to exceed the human start

And never learned to climb towards the Sun.

This earth is full of labour, packed with pain;

Throes of an endless birth coerce her still;

The centuries end, the ages vainly pass

And yet the Godhead in her is not born.

The ancient Mother faces all with joy,

Calls for the ardent pang, the grandiose thrill;

For with pain and labour all creation comes.

Savitri BOOK VI: The Book of Fate 443-44-45

CANTO II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain

Section 2

Then after a silence Narad made reply:

Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,

And something now of the deep sense of fate

Weighted the fragile hints of mortal speech.

His forehead shone with vision solemnised,

Turned to a tablet of supernal thoughts

As if characters of an unwritten tongue

Had left in its breadth the inscriptions of the gods.

Bare in that light Time toiled, his unseen works

Detected; the broad-flung far-seeing schemes

Unfinished which his aeoned flight unrolls

Were mapped already in that world-wide look.

“Was then the sun a dream because there is night?

Hidden in the mortal’s heart the Eternal lives:

He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,

A Light shines there nor pain nor grief can cross.

A darkness stands between thyself and him,

Thou canst not hear or feel the marvellous Guest,

Thou canst not see the beatific sun.

O queen, thy thought is a light of the Ignorance,

Its brilliant curtain hides from thee God’s face.

It illumes a world born from the Inconscience

But hides the Immortal’s meaning in the world.

Thy mind’s light hides from thee the Eternal’s thought,

Thy heart’s hopes hide from thee the Eternal’s will,

Earth’s joys shut from thee the Immortal’s bliss.

Thence rose the need of a dark intruding god,

The world’s dread teacher, the creator, pain.